R.I.P- Brent Hinds

I wrote something for Ghost Cult Magazine that really summed up my feelings best, but it feels wrong to not write something here since this is my personal blog, where I give you my raw thoughts on life and music.  I've written a lot of these, but it hits a little different when it's somebody who slept on your futon, somebody you played music with, somebody who gave you a big grin when he saw you walking around in Little Five Points, and yelled, "What's up, Bench Press." 

We never talked about Mastodon; we talked about adventures out on the road, but when I lived in Atlanta, he had enough hangers-on when his band blew up, and watching it happen in real time was surreal. We are always a few doors down from each other in seperate practice spaces, He encouraged a lot of bad ideas, like a roller skating Kiss tribute band. Even though he thought the music was silly, he compared it to a live version of the Electric Mayhem band from The Muppet Show. 

We bonded over artists we loved. The only two metal bands we really talked about were  Iron Maiden ( he preferred the first two albums) and  Neurosis. I think he enjoyed being able to talk to me about music that wasn't metal or punk, since that's what we were surrounded by in Little Five Points, the conformity or non-conformity, another frequent topic. But we talked about Waylon Jennings, George Jones Frank Zappa. Dire Straits, Chet Atkins, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart, Nick Cave, Swans, Sonic Youth, and Die Kruzen come to mind. 

He loved music, he loved life, he understood when I said that you can judge a person by their taste in music, because if it vibes with them, then that is what resonates with them, it's how they are made up, and a good indicator of how much depth they are going to have. There was a good deal of music we did not always agree with. The band's I like that he didn't, he would say, were what made me a big kid, and we agreed that if you forget the things that made you happy as a child, you would be a miserable adult. 

He said it was amazing to him that I got sober and took care of my mental health the way that I did, and he wished it were that easy for him, but everybody has their own path. That is what I love the most about him he was a man who was on his own path and even in the face of the bullshit that comes along with the music business he did it on he own terms, and did not change much for better or for worse in the process, and he was one of a kind, glad we got to call each other friends my world is a little smaller without him in it now. 

pst405